Martin's Case Against Divorce

Read Martin's Case For Divorce, added August, 2009.

Why Divorce Sucks
As my friend Sue wrote me, “divorce sucks.” I agree with Sue. Any polemic against divorce can’t save my 22 year marriage (gone for more than 5 years now), but it may, through delusion, help me feel better so why not. Delusion, as it turns out, is an important reason divorce is a poor solution. Those who read ScentTrail even occasionally know my love of three-legged-stools. Here is Martin’s case against divorce three-legged-stool:

• Leg One: The Happiness Problem
  Happiness is mostly delusion. What makes us more or less happy is a poorly understood thing subject to whims and misperceptions as Stumbling on Happiness author Daniel Gilbert wrote.
  

• Leg Two: Money
  Divorce is not cheap. There are direct costs such as lawyer’s bills and paying higher taxes. In fact, any divorce can easily cost $100,000 in direct and indirect costs.
  

• Leg Three: Psychological Damage
  No one “wins” in a divorce. Partners who leave, unless highly compartmentalized, feel guilt and those who are left feel abandoned. No one puts “initiated divorce” on a resume.
  

Leg One: The Happiness Problem
What makes us happy, it turns out, is not as well known as we think. This is Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s main point in Stumbling on Happiness. Gilbert points out how adaptable we are. My father has Leukemia (CLL). This is shocking news and hearing this information over ten years ago was a shock for my dad (for me too). My father developed justification, “I’ve had a good life.” He adapted, made peace and was able to return to his “happiness baseline.”

Gilbert makes the point what we THINK we want is often different than what we DO want. Ever noticed getting that big promotion, new house or fancy sports car left you feeling hollow? This is because we are POOR PREDICTORS of what will make us happy. We set goals underestimating how time will change our perspective by the time of their achievement.

My ex-wife worked on her departure, I now realize, for years. I am sure if you asked her if she was happier as a result of her decision she would answer in the affirmative. You have to be one of the most in touch people on the planet to take such radical action and NOT create logic about why divorce was the ONLY and RIGHT thing to do. Do we ever really ONLY have one answer to a problem? What is right in a human equation such as this? Right and wrong imply a system of measurement. Can we really apply measurement to who we are and who we are together? This is like awarding an Oscar. We create horse race where no horse race makes sense. There is no way to definitively say X is the “best” movie because there is no dimension where all movies intersect. If they don’t intersect they can’t compete, at least not objectively. If you are evaluating who I’ve been, who I am and will become can any system measure such an ontological thing? Don’t think so.

If, most of the time, we aren’t really in contact with what is or will make us happy why would we divorce? My ex-wife wasn’t “happy” and divorcing would help according to her logic. Did divorce simply replace existing challenges with new ones? Divorce certainly has opened her life up to new people, new men. Once I told my ex the most interesting man she was going to know she married. This is pure ego of course, but there is a certain truth. The marginal difference between people is not as great as we think. There are certain prerequisites any friend of yours must meet. They must have a certain education, a familiar family background and like similar things. How likely is it my ex-wife, for the sake of example, would end up a gun moll married to “Say hello to my little friend,” Tony Montano? Not going to happen. Tony could never get inside the fence (machine gun or no). The marginal difference between those who can get inside the fence and the man she was married to for over twenty years is so small as to be unintelligible.

Why do we divorce if we are likely to end up with a similar person and NOT find happiness? We divorce because of the “grass is always greener” syndrome. We habituate to anything including our partners. We habituate to our partners faster than anything due to the amount and kinds of exposure. We see our partners in many “non-romantic” ways. Remember the first time you realized your beautiful wife (or husband) had bodily functions? Sure to remove some romance off of any relationship. We see every flaw. Flaws magnified by time become brutality. Just as we are poor happiness readers we can be overly harsh too. I know this because some of the same traits my ex-wife loved during the first phase of our union became brutal by the end. Passion and drive became abuse. In no way am I wiping my slate clean. At first I carried 100% of our divorce. After doing hard psychological work I understood any claim over 50% is negative hubris and stupid. I see myself operating in a steady state, but this is the kind of self-delusion Gilbert discusses. It is the self-delusion we create to mold one day into the next.

The salient point is if you can’t solve the true source of future happiness divorce is a crapshoot.

Leg Two: The Money
It is no mistake divorce rates have slowed during the worst recession in our lifetimes. People can’t afford to get divorced. Their evaluation is correct. My Martin Guesstimate is any divorce costs more than $100,000 in direct and indirect costs. Sources of financial pain are many. Lawyers, the IRS and realtors are just a few. I can hear the, “You are crazy we got divorced and it only cost $10,000”. Once again, delusion and misinformation rule the day.

After so many years in business one thing I know how to do is fully load a P & L (profit and loss statement). Sit down with a pencil and a pad and add up the indirect costs of your divorce. You lost a tax credit. Let’s be cheap and say that was $1,000 and assume you don’t get married for at least five years, so snap and we are at $15,000 ($10,00 initial cost + $5,000 indirect cost due to loss of tax credit). You both lost that credit, so our total now becomes $20,000.

Did you have to sell a house to pay off a spouse? This means 5% of your house’s selling price is now in someone else’s pocket. Let’s say, just for easy math, your house was worth $200,000, this means you paid $10,000 to a realtor. Snap and we’ve arrived at $30,000. Did you have to sell stock (God I hope not in this market) to achieve the 50% / 50% split? Not only might you have to sell at a loss you also lose the opportunity cost of the money (it can’t make as much money split in two as it was before the split). Let’s charge an average Net Present Value charge of $10,000 for stock sales (and in some cases this will be way to puny a charge in some too much) to even out your 401K’s. Snap and we are at $40,000.

You had to buy new furniture. You had more than enough furniture when you were married but she (or he) got the good stuff so you have to buy more (or new). Snap and there goes another $10,000 bringing us to $50,000. I could go on discussing things such as car replacement, insurance costs and wrecked credit rating (increasing your finance charges), but you get the idea. The average divorce costs $100,000 in direct and indirect expense (and this may be VERY conservative).

Leg Three: Psychological Damage
Psychology is always more expensive and harder to repair than stuff. You can buy a new bed but it will take years before you will be able to sleep in it. You can’t buy a new head. You lose a family. My friend Sue discussed the loss of her nieces and nephews. I lost mine too and they were the only children in my life (Sue has children). Friends go too. One really good friend showed his true colors by having an affair with my ex-wife. He is married and needs to read this tome. He likes his toys and wouldn’t be able to afford any of them if he was sued for divorce (right SG?).

Psychological damage is another hidden cost component. We spent $5,000 in “counseling” meant to split us apart more than bring us together. I then spent another $5,000 trying to understand what just happened. Never got an answer to an unanswerable question but bills came with predictable regularity. Finally I declared myself cured and cut off the direct line to dwindling savings.

It seems like I received the worst of the psychological damage. I was the LEFT. Everything I read says people leaving face challenges too. There must be a HUGE let down when such a radical expensive action is taken and no radical new life happens. That must be a let down of unimaginable depth. My father left my mother for a long-term mistress. When that relationship broke apart, not an unfamiliar pattern, he spoke of long stretches of loneliness. Getting what you think you want is no guarantee of happiness. My father is remarried and seems happy, but is there justification logic in there? My father is an engineer and a financial wiz, so the “net marginal return” argument is something he would understand. My father’s second wife is in the outer rings of “different”. She was a younger (she is my age) secretary. This is a way men, and increasingly women, try to break out into new territory in their second marriages. They break the mold of their first marriage by crossing age or social and economic barriers. Money is, for many, at the core of this shift. One partner, the older, has more of it by virtue of age, compounded interest or skill. The other, usually the younger, needs financial security and sees marriage as a way to solve money problems. There is never a free lunch. Younger partners simply transfer one kind of work for another. Money is always earned even when it appears free.

Martin’s Case Against Divorce Summary
This tome is too late to save my marriage, but maybe it can save yours. Unless you really know what will make you happy now and in the future, have a spare $100,000 and don’t mind having your sense of self run through a blender then don’t file the papers. If reading my case gives you even a moment’s hesitation slow down. Life is too short to endure needless hardship for any amount of time, but be sure those hardships are truly hard. Clear your mind from the nattering nabobs of negativism friends quickly become (this is worth another post at another time), and honestly share what you are thinking first with yourself and then your partner. If, after all this work, you MUST divorce Vaya con Dios. I hope this tome saved one marriage (heck the financial section should do that lol).

P.S. I know some will read my anti-divorce tome and think “man I understand why she divorced him.” There is some truth to such a thought. Logic extended beyond some point is abuse. If someone can’t see all moves on a mental board it is not abusive as much as arrogance and lack of humility. Humble centered people teach. They never obfuscate or overwhelm. My life is humble now. This is one positive connection from divorce. I don’t write as a presumptive “teacher”. I write only as a fellow traveler warning of difficulties ahead. Another positive change for me is a devotion to service. Serving others is how I want to spend the rest of my life. Service is the single goal of this anti-divorce tome.

Feel free to make the case FOR divorce in comments. I will also move this tome to my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-W-Smith/1066151258

Post Script:
My case against divorce is causing a bit of a stir. I had one additional thought since I posted Martin's Case Against Divorce. One of the reasons. We divorce to reset the clock. This thought arrived just after Daylight Savings. Saving daylight is a TINY change. Tiny maybe, but it always takes a week to get back on track. Divorce is a much BIGGER change. Divorce is like one of those pads we used to play with. You know the one with the film over the carbon. You draw on the film. I would mess my board up good because I knew a fresh, pristine surface was as simple as lifting a sheet of film. Many see marriage in this way. Once the board is too messy simply lift the film for a clean slate. Certainly this works, BUT for how long? Until the board is messy again. We run from messes because we are cowardly lions. Our outsides look tough. Really we need to find the guy behind the curtain. He needs to grant us courage to FIND ourselves by turning into the mess (running to it instead of away from it). The mess, the boring mess, is where life's meaning hides. It is where love lives. Don't lift the film just to make another mess. See mess as the beautiful man or woman you married. Do you win the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when you Don't lift the film? Probably not, but you will know yourself better and thus capable of a greater love. The other solution (divorce) more often than not reduces your humanity. Leaving may seem more fun in the short run, but, in the end, you lose something only messy life brings - LOVE. This is Martin's story and he is sticking to it :).


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